I'm a Mormon on a Mission: 9/20/2012: Mouh a

Hey family!

This week's been good! Workin' hard as usual, but life's good! I've just finished my first transfer here, which means that the newmissionaries arrived this week! Crazy how time flies. I got to see Sister Cutler, and her Chinese is absolutely amazing-- she's going to be an awesome missionary. We went finding with her for 2+ hours yesterday as part of her first day training in the field, since she was a solo sister in the MTC, and she was so good at just talking with everyone. It was really fun to see her here. Also, she had a mini preach my gospel, because apparently they sell those now! So Dad, if you all are already planning Christmas, that would be an awesome choice. Waakje you could send it sooner, I wouldn't mind. :) The big ones are so heavy. Uncle Rico's sure to have the hookups if they don't sell them widely yet.

One of our new investigators Agatha came to church on Sunday, which we were stoked about! She doesn't believe in God, but she's wanting to try out religion to see if it makes her happier. She told us she wasn't going to start keeping commandments like Tithing or the Word of Wisdom yet, just will continue to learn more, and if she wants to later, she might. We were totally satisfied with that response, seeing as we'd only taught her once and not even about the Restoration yet or any of the commandments. We're meeting with her again on Saturday!

Lau Jimuih from last week couldn't come to church this week b/c they called her into work at the last minute, but we'll see her again tomorrow. I'm a bit worried she might not be keeping her commitments. We'll see! Work is probably the biggest obstacle to keeping members active and getting new members, since so many jobs make their employees work on Sundays. For example, there's a recently returned missionary in one of our wards who's already on the verge of going inactive b/c his job makes him work on Sunday, even though he doesn't want to be inactive. We keep trying to convince him he needs to find a new job. So Amy! Don't take a job that's going to make you work on Sunday! The Lord will reward you for it, since he'll know your sacrifice.

However, we did find a new Lau Jimuih this week. I started talking toher on Monday when we went finding, and she's very quickly become one of our most favorite people ever. She has like 6 teeth, is hilarious, makes the best facial expressions, and at times reminds us of the old lady in Swan Princess. She showed up to the lesson we scheduled with her yesterday, and is willing to keep meeting with us and come to church on Sunday, since she doesn't do anything all day long! Yeah! When I was saying the opening prayer in our lesson and I was thinking about what to say next, and she says "Gong Yingman a!" Translation: Speak English! Even though she speaks almost no English. hahaha. I had to stifle some laughter on that one. Actually, I've probably never laughed so much in a lesson. Sister Cutler was with us too, so that was her first lesson in the field. All four of us laughed quite a bit as she was trying to understand the who Jehovah and Jesus and Heavenly Father are and who are the same and who are different. We're excited to see her again. We're hoping that with all her spare time we can get her to read the Book of Mormon. She did open up to us a bit, and we found how the gospel can answer her needs, so we really hope she progresses. She's cool. We've also started teaching Jeng Jimuih's member daughter Erica's worker name Lilibeth who's from the Phillipines, since the international district is swamped and she always comes to our ward anyway. She's so sweet, and has read all the way up to Mosiah. Her 5 year old boy and her husband who's a farmer live back in the Phillipines, so it's been hard on her to be here. But we're excited to teach her. We're teaching her in English, which was actually really weird-- it felt like I was translating in my mind from Cantonese lessons to English, not like I was naturally teaching in English. It was bizzare. haha.

I also went on my first exchanges this week-- my companion and this other Sister's companion had to go to a career workshop thing on the Island that all missionaries have to do before they go home, so I had a new companion for a couple of days for a few hours! Her name is Sister Meldrum, and my MTC district replaced hers.

So this week has been quite eventful and different than usual, which has made it fun!

Love you! Stay awesome!

Sister Heaton

Now here are some pictures she sent this week: